President Obama on Thursday sanctioned the GRU and FSB, leading Russian intelligence agencies the U.S. said were involved -- actions that the next administration could roll back easily. The U.S. is also booting 35 Russian diplomats from the country.

In a statement early Friday, Putin called the American sanctions a “provocation” that were “aimed at undermining the future of Russian-American relations.” But he added that he would wait and see what the next administration does once Mr. Trump is sworn into office on Jan. 20.

This is the second time this week Mr. Trump has weighed in on Russian hackers. On Wednesday, the president-elect said he believed the U.S. “ought to get on with our lives.”

“I think that computers have complicated lives very greatly,” Mr. Trump told reporters. “The whole age of the computer has made it where nobody knows exactly what’s going on. We have speed, we have a lot of other things, but I’m not sure we have the kind of security we need.”